Prologue

Love can hit you when you least expect it. It could be a soft easy wind that caresses you and gets stronger over time till it absorbs into your body and heart. Other times it can hit you like a gale-force wind and take every breath you will ever have, and breathe life into the person who took it in the first place. Laken stole my breath. She was my gale-force wind, and I will gladly give her every breath I have just to keep her safe, alive, and mine. If I have to live without her then I don’t want my breath. I don’t want anything but her. I will go to hell and back to get her from the grips of death.

And as I kneel on the bathroom floor with her blood covering my hands, she has stolen my breath once again, because I can’t breathe. I can’t move. They took her out of my arms and I’m frozen in this nightmare that’s on a loop in my mind where I’m seeing the light slowly leave her eyes. I need that gale force wind again because I will die without it. I will die without her.